


Discard the Winning Tile

by enmity



Category: Persona 2, Persona Series
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Background Relationships, Eternal Punishment, F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-08-07
Updated: 2017-08-07
Packaged: 2018-12-06 03:19:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,810
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11591838
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/enmity/pseuds/enmity
Summary: Suou’s weird, for someone she can unreservedly describe to her mother as being put together.





	1. Discard the Winning Tile

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Some adults they are.

.

.

.

_Discard the Winning Tile_

—

**0** **1** **.**

"You box, Ms. Serizawa?" The policeman raises an eyebrow at her, reflective skepticism giving way to vague impression.

Ulala would toss her hair back, if she could. Instead she tilts her head, a slight angle, and offers him a dazzling smile. No doubt she looks tired and blanched underneath the school's subpar lighting, the harshness of it bringing out the worst parts of her complexion to the surface, but she knows ways to make the best out of a bad situation.

"Only recreationally – I'm kidding! Women these days need to know how to defend themselves, you know," she tells him. Maya walks ahead of them both, arms crossed over her chest and much calmer than a woman who was just threatened by a serial killer has any right to be. "There're tons of criminals in the city nowadays. I'm sure you'd agree, Sergeant."

Over her shoulder the man shrugs impassively, forgetting the courtesy of returning her smile. "I can't deny that there are people with … unsavory characteristics roaming the streets," he acquiesces, stilted and entirely serious. The conversation stops there, and silence, uncompanionably, falls between them once more.

Their footsteps are oddly uneven, the three of them, and it's not before long that she's the one behind, instead of him. His stride is longer, more purposeful, and he passes Ulala by easily, but nevertheless slows down before he can overtake Maya, always a short distance away. It's not until they're halfway climbing up the last set of stairs that she feels an urge, sudden and irrational, to roll her eyes at him (well, his back) – but instead her knuckles wrap around the metal railing, just a bit more tightly, and then she takes another step, catching up to him.

.

**0** **2** **.**

"A guitar?" This time it's her turn to stare. She eyes the instrument Suou's somehow procured with interest and slightly more unwarranted suspicion than can be reasonably expected. Just an hour ago they were beating abominations from hell into the ground, for fuck's sake. "Where'd you get that?"

"Weren't you saying something just now about taking dance lessons, Ms. Serizawa? I thought it might help when, um, fighting isn't in our best interests." He strums the guitar in a way that he probably thinks is cool, but she's polite enough not to laugh. "There are other ways to take demons into custody, is what I'm saying."

"The word you're looking for is negotiation," Baofu supplies, completely unprompted, and wheezes; the sound doesn't need to be played up for the casual mockery to become apparent, but he does so anyway. "Seriously, flamenco? What the hell?"

She can practically sense the detective bristling, so she subtly steps aside as a precautionary measure. In the process of doing that she nearly trips over a pile of magazines stacked in disarray on Maya's floor,  _of course_ ; Bao doesn't attempt to stifle his laugh at that, and in the middle of her biting down an inopportune expletive from coming out she nearly forgets that Suou hasn't even answered her question.

—

"It's been a while, actually," he tells her, later. Outside the restaurant windows the day sky is fading into a paler shade of blue. Yumezaki smells of the same smoke and oil, but she doesn't wrinkle her nose; she knows this place too well. The paper wrapping, plastered with Peace Diner's trademark logo, gets balled up and tossed into the nearby trashcan, bouncing against the plastic edge before falling into the heap.

Ulala's already finished her burger. She doesn't remember asking, but the detective's an unflappable guy otherwise, and she figures that between the two men, making small talk with Suou is the marginally superior option. Not that Bao's – whatever the deal with that guy is – a particularly daunting bar to measure up to, but, anyway. She's not going to tell him that.

She blinks up at him instead, inanely. "Huh?"

"The guitar, I mean. I started learning how to play … a few years ago, I think." His eyebrows crease in recollection. "I was hoping it'd make for a good common ground with Tatsuya – something to talk about. But he never seems interested. It's like our conversations always end in frustration. I really don't know what to do with him."

"Oh," she says, and uncrosses her arms, suddenly feeling self-conscious.

Tatsuya – the younger Suou, she recalls, and distantly realizes that dealing with sibling baggage isn't a category in her otherwise impressive repertoire of life experience. Yeah, that's the word. She glances over to him; he doesn't seem to catch her mental stumbling-over, too caught up in his own private brotherly rut to notice. Her heart swells with a burst of secondhand worry.

"If it helps, Detective, I don't think you're bad at all."

This gets a smile from him. She doesn't see that often; not without Maya in the near vicinity, at least. She doesn't quite know what to think of that observation. He says, "Thank you, Ms. Serizawa. You're a very passionate dancer, for your part."

Suou sounds too genuine for it to be anything than an honest compliment. Her resulting laughter at that is brief, easy, a quiet thing lost in the cheery song playing loud through the speakers. She's smiling when she says, "I didn't expect the money I invested in lessons to pay off quite like this."

"Good thing you did, though," is his reply. "I forgot how – nice it was."

His touch on her shoulder is friendly and fleeting, if that, and the feeling of it doesn't register for either of them until after he retracts his hand, surreptitious, shoving it into his pocket. Suou looks away, straightening his glasses, as unconscious an act as any. The two of them follow Maya outside the glass doors. Ulala lets him push them open in front of her. She steps outside, blinking away the late afternoon sun from her eyelashes, and watches a slant of gold fall onto the side of his face, turned aside. And then, once more, she watches him overtake her to catch up to Maya.

—

It's not warm, she notices a second later. Ulala lets her hand fall to her side, expression blank.

.

**0** **3** **.**

"Jeez. I'm not lugging her around on my back. Suou, you deal with this."

Her eyes flutter open to a bright light, fading into a deep blue ceiling. The floor is cold underneath her. She sits upright, murmuring pithy apologies to Maya's gentle face, and then the other woman pulls her up, smiling earnestly. Ulala can't find it in herself to return the gesture. She thinks, this is already more than enough forgiveness than she deserves.

How terrible of a thing it is, for love to morph into hate, for affection to grow into resentment. She can't remember when it was that her heart started to lose its way. No, she corrects. She can't admit it. Maya's soft smile and cheerful laughter haven't changed, even after all these years they've known each other, and yet, Ulala has. Something deep inside her corrupted; turned into this ugly, incomprehensible thing. When was it that she stopped looking at Maya as the friend she's always been?

The questions needle at her as they make their way down the mazelike halls of Zodiac. Ulala leans her palm onto the wall, afraid to stumble in the dim. The red light makes her dizzy, fogs her thoughts with unsavory imagery.

Noriko, too, must have had her reasons. Ulala tries her best not to speculate. The concept of murder is easy enough to detach from, she supposes, even for a high-school girl – it wasn't something that normal people did, was supposed to do. It's only when you realize they're truly dead that you feel the trace of blood on your hands, that you actualize the fact that you've just killed someone into the cold reality it is. That girl was sixteen. God, she feels sick. If the worst did happen – if they hadn't been there, if she'd succumbed to her own baser envy – she can't imagine ever having to deal with the aftermath, she'd rather –

"Um. Thank you, Detective," she finds herself saying. The words tumble out her mouth almost nervously, a flimsy attempt at self-distraction. "And … I'm sorry. I almost got you into trouble back there."

Suou's expression is blank when he faces her, a hardened slab of marble. "I wouldn't have done anything I'd end up regretting," he replies simply. "The responsibility was not on you. Men need to own up to their actions, after all. In any case, if you want to thank someone, thank  _him_."

She feels herself sigh at that, despite her better judgment. She pulls her hand away from the wall and inches a step closer towards him. Suou's stride is still longer, and he still allows Maya to walk ahead of him, but Ulala's gotten better at keeping up. She stares down at their feet, continuing to move out of step with one another.

"You shouldn't beat yourself up so much over it," she hears him chide, voice low. Her gaze jolts up immediately. His hand is placed on his temple, an unconscious gesture. Said like that, it sounds more like an imperative rather than the concerned advice it ought to be. "What matters is that you didn't go through with it. And you were inebriated, were you not? Ms. Amano isn't the type to hold grudges – at least, I don't think so," he goes on. His eyes flit up towards the ceiling as he says, thoughtful, "There are times when even the strongest people can lose control. Whether you are able to overcome it or not, that's the important part. Trust me on that, Ms. Serizawa."

"But," she says, "I couldn't." Another sigh, a renewed bitter taste congealing in her mouth, and then: "You talk like you understand what it's like. You've got a steady career, no shortage of admirers, and you don't waste money on frivolous crap. No offense, but I've never seen someone more in control of his life before."

Suou pauses at that. From the corner of her eye she notices his right hand curling into itself, a split-second twitch, before opening once more. "Jealousy is a human emotion. Feeling it doesn't make you a horrible person, Ms. Serizawa. It simply makes you the same as everyone else." And then his eyes narrow, puzzled. "What do you mean, admirers?"

Ulala throws her arms back behind her head. "Oh? So you're really that dense?"

"I'm afraid I don't follow." His voice is flat.

"Hmm. I see," she says to herself, her footsteps picking up ever so slightly. If she feels even the slightest bit of delight at his confused expression, then she does a good job of not showing it.

.

**0** **4** **.**

"So that's your brother, huh."

She stares, turning the picture over to its blank opposite side as she hands it back to him. The photograph seems fairly recent; it was probably taken for administrative purposes, considering the uniform. Her mind recalls the teenage boy she saw in the flesh just hours ago, with a sword held tight in his grasp and an immeasurable distance in his gaze. The boy who'd pushed his brother off the blimp with few words and such ease.

She tries to reconcile the image crystallized in her memory to the crisp-ink one depicted in the photograph, the one wearing a cocky smile sanitized for the camera flash, and doesn't know where the discrepancy between the two truly lies, what it was that bothered her so much when she looked at the picture Suou's holding between his fingers.

"The resemblance is more obvious now, I guess. But, hmm. I feel like there's something – fundamental setting the two of you apart. I can't really name what, though."

"What, is it the wrinkles?" Suou rolls his eyes, slipping the picture back into its place in his wallet. She thinks she should say something about the fact that he keeps a picture of his brother around in his pocket to – what, look at while commuting to work? When he misses him, because as far as she knows they can't even hold a normal conversation without a fifty-foot drop involved as a conditional? What the hell, this guy's more hopeless than she thought. But Ulala stays quiet. He adds, "You don't think we're alike?"

Her gaze strays towards one of the innumerable clocks hanging off the walls of Time Castle. She's careful not to meet the shopkeeper's eyes in the process, of course. "Well," she tries, "he is cute."

His reply is instantaneous. She doesn't miss it when he splutters over the first syllable, though. "You don't mean that, Ms. Serizawa."

She's looking distractedly over his shoulder towards the other man standing a distance across when she says, "No, Detective Suou. Of course I'm just kidding. Learn to live a little."

His face contorts and Ulala laughs, breezily, though a part of her wonders why, because the whole thing they're caught up in isn't very funny, really, once she thinks about it. Her psyche must be ruined by now. She wipes the imaginary tear brimming up her eye and brings her gaze up to meet his again.

.

**0** **5** **.**

"This feels wrong somehow." The crinkled paper umbrella bumps against the ice cubes, almost glistening under the bar's intimate light. A damp film of condensation gathers at her palm and she pushes the unfinished drink away, frowning questioningly up at him. His eyes are dim and hard behind red lenses and Ulala doesn't know why she expected otherwise, if only for a second. "Sergeant? You agree, right?" she appeals.

It doesn't feel wrong, she decides, not really; just less than right. She doesn't say it, though. The cover story they've invented is unoriginal, uninspired to the point of being laughable – some old scenario about a coldhearted workaholic, time and time again ignoring the outstretched arms of his girlfriend, reaching pitifully for affection – but plausible enough, and no one, least of all themselves, can expect anything more from this uneven combination of leading man and woman. Ulala reminds herself of this as she stirs her drink, absent-minded. Their movie would probably flop. Wait, can Suou even act? Can she? Oh god.

"You're the one who wanted to draw straws," he points out before she can ask, his matter-of-fact tone bringing her back to reality. A meager cover for lack of enthusiasm, she recognizes, and bites the inside of her cheek. That makes two of them, then. "Anyway," Suou assures her, "it's just acting. We don't have to be good, just convincing."

"How should we start?"

"Let's just stick to the script, Ms. Serizawa."

What script, she wants to ask. She leans her chin against her hand and looks ahead. "So we should, what, talk about life? Air out our problems in front of each other?"

"Look, it's not an ideal situation for either of us, but that's the plan. You can start." He gestures vaguely towards her.

She does.

"I meant it, you know," she says, and the words come out tumbling one after another, as easy as water, "when I said that you had it together. I used to think that I'd start figuring myself out when I'm an adult, but – here I am, and I haven't gotten anywhere near  _having myself figured out_ , or whatever the fuck that is. It's just so… tiring. It's tiring." She lets out a breath and turns to him, feeling embarrassed and strangely expectant for a reaction. It strikes her as terribly unfair, to be the only one pouring out her heart for an audience of one. "I wish I had some kind of goal or a, a trajectory to follow through till the end. Like a bullet in the chamber. They've got a purpose. You must at least have something like that, don't you?"

Suou blinks, seemingly at loss. She almost wants to apologize to him for babbling, but then he harrumphs, a displeased frown already spreading across his face. The dials of his wristwatch glint beneath the soft fluorescent when he pulls up his left arm, tipping what's left of his glass into his mouth. A strange part of her is curious to know if that, too, is as much a controlled action as anything else Suou does at any given time, or if it's one of those supposed exceptions that she feels is becoming increasingly less rare now that they're inching closer to a real lead and that he knows his brother definitely hasn't yet been killed.

It strikes her that she's not even sure why she cares – if she's supposed to care. She chalks it up as another one of those unasked questions that she won't ever get the answers to.

"A purpose, huh." His mouth curves into this odd, lopsided imitation of a smile that isn't entirely unfamiliar to her, but startles her a little all the same. If she tries hard enough maybe his face'll look as flushed as she knows hers must be. "You're not the only one who's tired of who they are."

She feels her face twist, stupidly, disbelievingly. "You, Sergeant?"

"I didn't," Suou starts, then stops, distracted. "I didn't set out to become a homicide detective. I wanted to be—" He sighs. "All I'm saying is that…"

She says, "I know. Reality's not a pretty thing."

She doesn't even know what she'd wanted to be when she was in high school; just that she imagined herself holding someone's hand, imagined her smiling face, standing with her pretty white dress and pretty lover and the sound of wedding bells, fading in the distance and the rumble of the expensive car that Maya definitely doesn't get to drive and subsequently wreck. And yet she couldn't even have that.

"What are you holding out for?" she hears herself ask, a whisper spoken perhaps more to herself than anyone else, and at the same time Suou interrupts, "It's almost time."

"Oh." Ulala regains her composure in a second. "Yes," she says, eyeing his wristwatch, the silly question quickly forgotten. "It is."

—

"It's time."

Finally Ulala swallows the rest of the drink. It burns the back of her throat as it goes down, and she feels a sigh rising past it, a shallow sound bereft of dignity. "You know, it's still… weird, kind of. I mean, I know what you want to say – I suggested it – but. Jeez, you're too calm!" she babbles uselessly. "Wouldn't you rather do this with, I don't know,  _Ma-ya_?"

He glances sidelong at her from his own emptied glass, so seriously it's almost funny. "I assume that means you're going to pull your punches, Ms. Serizawa?" he dodges her inopportune question with a non-sequitur one of his own, his ignorance steadfast, a swift escape route for both of them. He's so polite.

Good. She's already pretending to forget she even asked it in the first place.

A dozen-so years' of memories repackage and shrink-wrap themselves into a brief window of three seconds, an instant jolt of carefully jigsawed regret and self-pity assaulting her the moment she dares to look inside. Because Serizawa Ulala has a history of making bad decisions, saying the incorrect things, chasing after the wrong people: she isn't going to try and disprove it now. The heart wants –

She smiles at him, barely, the half-baked thought cast swiftly away. "I'll try."

Suou gets up, palms laid flat on the table. "Let's get it over with, then. Ms. Amano's counting on us, after all. … Baofu, too."

"Yeah," she says, following him, not rolling her eyes. "Of course."

To her credit, she does try. She really does. Suou still ends up sprawled in a prone position halfway across the bar's floor, though. She apologizes to him profusely afterwards, at Satomi Tadashi, and he nods in silent acknowledgement as he winces, nursing a hand over his stomach. Ulala's fairly sure she bruised it, so she throws in another ' _sorry_ ,  _detective!_ ' for good measure, and from somewhere behind them, Bao is definitely snickering.

"Save it!" she tells him, face fuming, turning around with arms akimbo before he can crack some vulgar joke or other. To her dismay, it only makes the bastard laugh. Suou's too busy clutching his stomach to react, though she thinks he'd probably be just as offended, if not more. The thought is reassuring, though she can't pinpoint why, and later, when Maya places a sympathetic hand on her shoulder, Ulala lets herself lean into the warmth of it, just a little.

.

**0** **6** **.**

Ulala crosses her arms, frowns. She thinks she can do a passable impression of Suou like this, with her face scrunched up just so and eyebrows furrowed, like developing wrinkles fifteen years early is some kind of sport. Maybe he thinks it is – he's good at too many things – and all he needs is someone to pat him gently on the shoulder, turn him around and say that really, it isn't, and that he needs to stop. She's not going to be that person, but she can at least hold out hope that someone will. "I was looking forward to it, though."

"If you want to complain, complain to Baofu over there," he gestures flippantly. "And anyway, you clearly don't mean that, Ms. Serizawa. Eat up. We need as much energy as we can get if we're going to take on Ginji."

He slides her bowl of ramen towards her over the wooden counter. The steam makes her eyes water, but the chicken broth smells divine after hours spent running around a dingy lab, so she gives up her attempt to imitate him, breaks the chopsticks open and tries her best to eat without slurping for once. She doesn't know how it works that eating this stuff makes you faster, but she's not going to complain.

"Next time, though?" She raises an eyebrow at him.

"If there's another opportunity for you to—" Suou makes a face, also, did he just choke, "—use your 'sexy looks', then you can hold me to my word. I promise you."

Ulala rolls her eyes. "Yeah, right," she says, but doesn't stop herself from smiling. It's not like he'd care either way. She's not going to be that person. "Now that's something you definitely don't mean."

Suou doesn't reply to that. She figures he just didn't hear.

.

**0** **7** **.**

_Big Suou_  is kind of weird to say, at least in the beginning. She's never had a sibling, let alone an older brother, so consequently she's never had to call anyone  _nii-san_ before. Ulala's fairly certain that some people are into that kind of thing, but Suou has an actual younger sibling, so that must dampen things a bit for him. It's a bit more complicated than that, anyway. That's the entire reason she's calling him Big Suou in the first place. It must be rough to have your own younger brother all but outright disown you, and that's not even getting into the whole parallel world business Tatsuya seems set on keeping quiet about.

All that Ulala knows for sure is that her mirror self existing somewhere on the other side of the universe has to continue living without Maya at her side, her hometown sitting on top of a spaceship floating in the middle of fucking outer space, and that – god, where should she even start. The idea itself would probably leave her depressed for a few days, maybe a week at most before she wakes up and realizes that's all it is, an idea, and that she's got nothing to worry about. But of course it isn't; of course in some other parallel universe Ulala is left all alone, doomed to coming back home to that dingy apartment she can't trust Maya to attempt to clean up anymore because she's dead. Because some sick abomination decided it'd be fun to stab her and let her bleed, just so he could watch the world burn before his eyes. She can't imagine having to wake up to that kind of reality.

She figures out somewhere along the way that perhaps the worst part about the whole thing, besides the fact that her other self's best friend is dead, is that she still ends up being swindled and left at the altar that doesn't even exist. Divine fate her ass.

Ulala's in the process of learning to think more about other people, though; genuinely, and not as a flimsy cover to keep her insecurities out of view. So she decides to call him Big Suou. She's can't pretend she'd be a good younger brother to him if the universe were reset once more and she ended up being born into his family – okay, let's stop that train of thought now – but she can at least try and cheer him up this way. There isn't much she can do besides letting him know, in the smallest of ways, that he really isn't as bad a person as he leads himself to believe. It's not like she doesn't understand why he feels that way.

"Don't let Bao's words get to you," she tells him. She narrowly misses bumping into a suddenly-protruding wall and curses, fuck, stupid god-damned spaceship and its invisible walls. Maya glances over, concerned, and Ulala shoots back a look that says, no, false alarm, just another wall. Suou doesn't flinch when she leans half of her weight on his right arm, her feet struggling to regain their balance. She straightens, wipes her hands on her skirt and continues: "As I was saying, Big Suou – family's an important thing. Don't let anyone, even Bao, tell you otherwise."

Ulala contemplates, for a moment, the differences between the two. Saga Kaoru and Suou Katsuya: a man who has survived loss and a man who fears loss more than anything else. No wonder they don't get along. She realizes that after all this time, she still insists on calling him Bao. She blinks away whatever emotion is threatening to rise at the observation: not the right time, not the right place.

"Saga didn't have to tell everyone about the money, though," Suou says, because he's still sulking about this even now. He's closed off, with his hands in his pockets and eyes stern as ever.

Tatsuya walks ahead of him, but he takes after his brother; he too allows Maya to walk ahead, content to follow, to watch her back with eyes full of an unnamed emotion. She told herself she'd stop feeling jealousy for the sake of it, and yet it still stings, the thought that someone could harbor such affection for another person. How utterly irrational, she thinks. Teenage boys are so difficult to understand. She turns to Suou.

"I remember what you said back then," she murmurs, low. "You had a dream once, didn't you? Another dream, about a future other than the one you're living."

"Nothing ever gets past you, Ms. Serizawa." He stifles a chuckle with the back of his hand. "My brother – I'm certain the Tatsuya of the other side is the same way – after the incident with our father, he changed. I grew distant from him. I was preoccupied with too many things to listen to him when it mattered the most. The days when the two of us lived happily together as brothers … I wish for nothing more than to bring us back to that time. That's why I became a police officer. I thought that if I could take back our father's honor, somehow, Tatsuya would start smiling again. I saved up the funds to prepare for when that day would come; to secure my brother a future where he could pursue his dream. But," and here he pauses, "in my pursuit of justice, I became blind to the things that truly mattered. Forgive me, Ms. Serizawa. I'm not making any sense, am I?"

"No. I understand."

Ulala says it with certainty because it's true. Maya's face flashes by her mind as she looks up at Suou. Maya, who had been so relieved when she told her she would agree to split the rent. Maya, who nursed her through every hangover and every heartbreak and who was always there, invariably waiting, standing in her cluttered half of the apartment with arms spread wide, ready to pick up the pieces alongside her. Maya, who she so cruelly resented, hated for being happy and accomplished and everything Ulala never thought she could be and more.

She remembers how easily love could morph into something ugly, something twisted and sharp like barbed wire; how easily the satisfaction of imagining their face fall outweighed the pain of self-infliction, cutting deep wounds into your wrist and neck and chest. It was so much easier to justify hurting someone if it meant you too would be left bleeding by the end of it. Ulala's heart no doubt has the cuts and bruises to prove it; Suou, she realizes now, has been through the same ordeal. Perhaps not in precisely the same manner as her but close enough where it mattered all the same. Close enough.

Some adults they are, she thinks to herself. She looks up at him.

His hand touches hers, almost accidentally. The contact is brief and brittle and she lets her fingers slide in the spaces between his, lets herself pretend it's unintentional, an irrational act brought on by exhaustion and the fog of impending doom hanging invisibly over their heads. Maybe, she thinks vaguely, she just wants somebody to lean onto. It doesn't have to be anything more or less than that. She wonders if Suou will understand, if she told him. She won't tell him. Suou might, but she won't allow herself to be so selfish. Still, she doesn't take a step back, doesn't pull away her hand or offset their careful balance in his absence of movement. There are limits, after all, to one's self-restraint. All of a sudden the air feels very quiet.

"We're falling behind," Suou remarks absently, breaking the lull, his ignorance steadfast once again. For whose benefit, is unclear. His attention is always set elsewhere. "Let's go, Ms. Serizawa. It'd be bad if we got lost in here."

The others' footsteps are already fading. Ulala exhales.

And then, she lets go.

"Lead the way, Mr. Katsuya."

.

**0** **8** **.**

Nyarl— something's mouth splits into a crooked grin. Tatsuya's blade never reaches his doppelganger's face; his hideous golden-eyed imitation stops the sword with a sweeping motion of his hand, effortless. Thwack, it goes, an ugly sound, but Tatsuya doesn't let the metal hit the floor. He keeps his grip on the handle, steadfast, his teeth grit and his eighteen-year-old borrowed body held entirely together by sheer force of will alone. Standing beside her Katsuya's own hand is clenched, shaking. She's just about to reach for him, or to Maya, or Saga – to do something, anything – and then.

Her double sneers at her the next instant, identical in every way except for the golden hue of honesty glimmering in her irises. Ulala is too tired by now to pretend she hasn't seen the same darkness looking back at her from the other side of the mirror before. She still feels herself shaken to the very core at the sight of it, though, and she is quick to tell herself it's a human reaction, to watch that vile part of her actualized into a form infinitely more revolting than she could ever have wanted to admit to herself. She'll tell herself anything if it means she won't have to face reality.

"The shadow of humanity," she hears Katsuya say, in a controlled voice.

"Let's play one last game," the Crawling Chaos says, and laughs.

They comply. It's not as if they ever had a choice.

—

They return to the shrine. Overhead the sky's colors shift and glow, a frightening mix of light and watercolor shades.

"We'll be alright, won't we?"

"We will. For Tatsuya's sake, and for the sake of everyone who suffered. It's not a question, Ms. Serizawa."

This time, his hand lingers on her shoulder. She lets him. She hopes that the tomorrow he wakes up to is a brighter day.

"For you, too," Katsuya tells her.

"Yes," Ulala says, her voice brittle, "if we ever get to it."

—

She doesn't say: after this is all over, I'd like to start from the beginning. I'd like to smile at you the same way I used to when we were adolescents. It's not a grand wish, I know, but I wonder if you'll forgive me enough to let me have it. No, no, don't look at me like that. It's alright. I'm learning to stop being so selfish, after all.

She tells Maya, "We should start gardening out at the veranda. Wouldn't that be a great idea?"

And the other woman smiles at her.

.

**0** **9** **.**

"You're in love with that woman," Katsuya's shadow says, glowering at them like gum at the bottom of his shoe. Ulala looks at neither the real man nor his double; she studies Tatsuya's expression instead, watching the way his face falls apart, piece by brittle piece. Like the first rocks of betrayal, breaking free before the avalanche.

He pulls the trigger, gun pointed at the target behind him, a blind leap of utter faith. The shadow falls back, lurching, his hand instinctively clutched at his woundless leg. Ulala doesn't cheer, though she comes close to. Katsuya walks up to his brother with nothing but repentance written on his face and the sight of it makes her breathe a shallow sigh of relief. Their hug is a short, awkward thing, and she can't help but hope for this Tatsuya to stay. She wonders if the older brother he grew up with feels the same things. She hopes he does, as well.

So she says—"Tough choice, Ma-ya; I'll leave the decision up to you!"—and pats her on the shoulder. The words are genuine and they come out easily. After everything she can't bear the thought of anything but a happy ending for all of them, whatever form it may be. She doesn't mind. She looks at Katsuya's flustered face and corrects herself: no, she will not mind at all.

—

The memory hurts to look at.

She's on her third glass of the evening and Maya is asleep. She says things that sound awfully distant and strange in her own ears now and yet the voice is unquestionably hers, so much that it stings to hear them replayed. She's not very good at facing herself, it turns out. She tucks Maya's bag underneath her elbow and her other arm wraps around Maya's as they disappear outside the door. Her past self says nothing but Ulala remembers the things she thought, watching Maya's sleepy half-lidded eyes peering absently at her. The things she could not say.

And then the flashback ends. Her shadow stands in her place in front of her. Ulala feels herself shaking, and not even Katsuya's plea for her to focus does anything to stop her tremors.

"Ms. Serizawa!" he calls out, finally returning her back to the present. His hand on her shoulder, once more, warm and reassuring. "You feel it too, right? We're almost there."

"We'll settle this once and for all."

"We will win."

"It's not even a question of if," Ulala echoes. And Katsuya, through his taut expression, seems pleased.

.

.

.

**10** **.**

There is a familiar man standing in front of the bus stop. The paper-wrapped bouquet crinkles a little in Ulala's grasp as she runs up to him, rather desperately, as though she’s afraid he will disappear otherwise.

"Big Suou! You – I didn't expect you'd show up." She heaves, one hand placed on her knee. "I'm embarrassed for turning up late, now. Ah, Ma-ya sent her regards, by the way. She's sorry she couldn't make it; she's been working overtime too often nowadays."

"Ms. Amano sounds as spirited as ever," he comments, missing the unintentional potential for irony completely. His voice betrays nothing. He glances over to his wristwatch: fifteen minutes left. "You brought flowers, too."

"They're a sign of my goodwill." She looks down at them. They're simple blossoms, pretty and small and bright yellow. The color makes her think of Kaoru's ridiculous suit and she almost smiles. "I wanted to see if he’s alright, after all of this. What about you, Big Suou? How's life been treating you?"

"Normally," is Katsuya's calm reply.

"Hm." She smiles. "I'm the same way. Didja make up with your brother?"

"It's a process. But I'm not going to give up."

He doesn't ask about her and Maya, and she chooses not to mention it. It wouldn't be fair to one-up him, in any case. The two of them stand in somewhat companionable silence that lasts a solid few minutes until Katsuya pulls up a lighter and packet of cigarettes from his suit pocket and she almost balks in surprise. She's sure she heard him talk about having quit – or maybe it was just something she overheard, one of those things he chooses to talk about to Maya and not her.

But after a moment, she says, almost shyly, "Can I have one?"

"Sure," Katsuya says. "Here you go, Ms. Serizawa."

She watches the ember glow at the end of the cigarette for a second, a faint, feeble thing, and then inhales. Her eyes follow the trail of the smoke, how the wisps fade into the chilly air. She thinks of Tatsuya's farewell as the bus pulls up next to the stop. She is one footstep ahead of him, for once. She's still thinking about the boy as the bus starts to move, as she sees Konan's industrial scenery blur into dull streaks of color outside the thick windows, and when Katsuya's hand rests on top of hers in the space between them on the seat, she lets it stay that way throughout the trip, as if it's the most natural thing in the world.

It's warm.

.

.

.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 29/09/17: i really need to go back and reedit this later/write part 2 but uh until i do that, thanks for reading. really! i don't even know what just happened. and if you liked it, thanks for giving this mess a chance.


	2. Discard the Winning Tile

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Suou’s weird, for someone she can unreservedly describe to her mother as being put together.

It’s surreal to walk into Peace Diner again, after everything. Ulala slumps into the plastic seat as Suou settles beside her, flipping through the menu automatically. His younger brother’s back is turned to them, steadfastly standoffish; his gaze is trained to some far-off point, unknown and invisible amongst the strangers and bright decor. Maya’s excused herself to the bathroom, apologetic. Bao retreated outside minutes ago, cigarette dangling and lit between his fingers. She hadn’t the energy to snap at him for not cooperating.

She had insisted on eating out mostly to smooth out the tension congealing between them, so thickly it’s palpable, but Tatsuya, stubborn boy he is, seems determined to undermine her efforts. A part of her wants to sympathize — she was eighteen too, once — but whatever notion of understanding she can offer him feels hopelessly shallow and trivial compared to the magnitude of sorrow he carries, etched on his face and weighing down his every step as though it were tied neatly around his ankles. Suddenly her own problems seem so pitiful in comparison. Ulala rests her chin on the palm of her hand and remains a silent observer. The sentiment hangs above them, unsaid but felt: no child should know such a burden.

Suou isn’t being subtle — under the fluorescent she can see how his eyes flicker, back and forth towards the pages and then Tatsuya, unthinkingly, as if the possibility of him allowing Tatsuya to leave his sight has never occurred to him for even a second. His glasses don’t conceal everything, and the skittishness of it strikes her as strange, uncharacteristic. She doesn’t catch herself staring until she notices Suou’s gaze on her, the look on his face a puzzled mirror of her own, and she flusters immediately, drawing herself back with an embarrassed smile. Her hand traces over the side of her face. The fact that it’s not warm is immensely reassuring.   

Suou’s eyes are dim and stern behind his glasses. More than anything he just looks tired, and she can’t blame him. They all are. Tatsuzou Sudou’s trail seems unreachably distant from where they stand, and even she knows this brief respite offers little to soothe their apprehension. His shoulders slant as he slips the sunglasses off to wipe the lenses down, a practiced motion, and he sighs: a heavy, cumbersome sound, unspooling like steel thread.

Ulala wants to do the same. She hates feeling so powerless. She thinks Suou understands that better than herself. “It’s frustrating,” she says, for lack of anything else.

Maya’s portion lies unopened across the table. Ulala discards her wrapper at the edge of the tray and, grateful for the lack of snipes about her manners, digs in immediately. 

He had mentioned once to Maya, seemingly out of nowhere, that he was used to having his food ready-made; he’d added a remark, regretful, about not having the time to cook proper meals as often as he’d like, and standing a short distance away, Ulala had overheard. By now the taste must go down unprocessed. The flavor of meat and sauce is coolly washed away by the soda and she swallows, throat tingling with strawberry fizz but feeling dry inside all the same.

Suou is considerably more conservative in his bites. It should make her feel self-conscious, she thinks absently, but his hardboiled detective act stopped being intimidating a while ago. Now it’s just — weird. Suou’s weird, for someone she can unreservedly describe to her mother as being put together. Hypothetically, anyway. Maybe that’s the problem with him. An amalgamation of too many good things on paper, folding inevitably in the scrutiny of reality's winds. She's pretty sure she's known men like that before.

Ulala feels herself smile before she knows it; small and brittle, but amused nonetheless. Her part of the meal is finished quickly. She sets aside what’s left of the soda, stirring absently with the straw. The music playing low through the restaurant’s speakers comes to the forefront of her mind in the ensuing interim of silence, neither awkward nor companionable. Every second feels stretched out to a minute. There is no time to waste, and yet, here they are. Here she is.

“We’re so helpless,” Suou says. It shows in his voice, taut like his knuckles around the paper cup of tepid coffee. “Being played by Tatsuzou’s hand like that. It makes me sick.”

“It’s not all bad,” she tries, a reflexive response — an urge to rebalance the situation. She leans further on the table, eyes planted to her plastic tray to avoid him. She’d give her hesitation away otherwise. “You caught up with your brother.”

“But, Tatsuya is…” The words trail away. Another sigh, softer now: “He said he’s going to tell us everything. And yet.”

He won’t speak to you. “I’m sure he has his reasons. You can’t just push him into it.”

“Serizawa-kun. Am I selfish person to you?”

The question catches Ulala briefly off-guard. She turns to him, and for that fraction of a moment she thinks he looks repentant. But the glitter of guilt in his eyes is gone as quickly as it arrives, so much that she can’t help but absolve him, chalking it up to a trick of the light, or a passing blip on a faulty radar. Without the red tint of his glasses she’s not sure he’d look as composed as he does right now, asking this question. That’s the point of it, perhaps; a makeshift barrier, nothing more or less. His eyes have the honesty of a child.

“Hey, what’s this all about,” she diverts. “Of all the things you let get under your skin, it’s Bao.”

“It’s not him,” is his stony reply. “It’s just a question.”

Her expression hardens. A part of her remembers, vaguely and not without grievance, that she is not Maya. The other woman would know what to say. Whatever Maya’s reply might be would be the right one to his ears. When Suou speaks to her — speaks of her; he’s not as discreet as he might think — his tone always carries a certain expectation, thin as it may be, a thread of hope he clings to with every word. The same cannot be said for Ulala. When he asks her this, he does so without hope for anything more than candid honesty, and both of them know this. Without Maya or Bao to fall back on, the words are strangely unguarded.

Yet Suou himself is no less self-controlled than she would expect him to be. Ulala can’t say she’s ever expected anything less. He would likely return her sentiment, she realizes. Truthfulness and tact: the two can coexist. She’s straddling a delicate line.

“It depends, doesn’t it?” Her eyes dart, momentary, towards Tatsuya. The boy does not seem to overhear, but her voice lowers slightly anyway, a sort of whisper that sounds stilted to her own ears. Maya, she distantly theorizes, is probably getting herself lost on the second floor. “When you say it like that it sounds so absolute. You’re either selfish or you’re … altruistic. I don’t think people are that simple; it’s not always easy to tell if what you’re doing is for the best, and for whom it is really. It’s the intention that matters most, wouldn’t you agree? As for that, Suou-nii, you probably know that part of yourself better than I do.”

“Adults aren’t supposed to be like that.”

“Some adults we are, then. Don’t you think?” She tilts her head.

Suou’s laugh at that is terse, flimsy, but unrestrained. He wouldn’t make such a wan sound in front of Maya, probably. She’s fairly sure. It almost makes her want to laugh, too.

“I’m sorry, Serizawa-kun. I’m asking strange things. Pay it no mind. I just didn’t expect you’d answer it so seriously.”

“That’s your fault,” she says, her face pursed, and she distantly registers how easy the transition is. The mood will soon lift. “You’re weirdly hard to get a hold on sometimes.” Flippantly, she adds, in a huff: “I’m not Ma-ya, you know!”

This gets a rise out of him. “How did you come to that conclusion?!” The color of his face is almost embarrassing. She closes her eyes as she puts a hand over her smiling mouth, the other gripping loosely at the table edge.

“Jeez,” Bao’s voice interrupts. “You two making a ruckus here? I was waiting for ages out there. What’s this about Amano?”

“Brother, Ulala, let’s get going already. Are you two done with the food? Where did Maya go?”

She knows that when she opens her eyes, Suou’s expression will be a mirror image of her own: the slant of his shoulders, gone, unoffered to the world. Under the stark glare of restaurant lights, she feels her smile broaden by a degree. 

**Author's Note:**

> 29/09/17: the only thing i remember abt this is that it spawned from a fanart of tatsuya drinking coca cola. anyway this was actually supposed to be set after baofu splits from the party to do his ... whatever that was and katsuya was supposed to like comfort ulala or w/e while they eat burgers ... also NATURALLY this was written @ 2am right after i got to the part where tatsuya joins the party, sorry etc


End file.
